CHICO — Cafeteria food in the Chico schools will be undergoing visible and less obvious changes in the coming year.

On Wednesday during a workshop session of the Chico Unified School District board of trustees, Tanya Harter, interim director of nutrition services for the district, said that changes in federal guidelines will have an impact on the school menus.

The new menus will have limits on the fats and trans fats, calories, sodium, and starches.

Harter said the new rules will be fully rolled out in July 2012.

The menus will have greater emphasis on vegetables, fruits and whole grains. The kids will also be seeing fewer potatoes on the menu because, according to Harter, potatoes are seen as a “bad” vegetable.

The amount of meat in the meals will be reduced to help meet the calorie requirements.

She also explained, because the district has its own bakery, meeting the whole grain requirements for baked goods won”t be a particular challenge. She said CUSD is the only district that she knows of that has its own bakery.

Harter said since the CUSD has been working under California restrictions, which she claimed are the most restrictive in the nation, meeting the new federal standards won”t be too difficult.

The meals offered by the district include breakfast and lunches in all the schools, and in some schools there are after-school snacks.

At present, the district is providing about 9,000 meals a day.

Districtwide, 42 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced cost meals, but Harter said the CUSD only gets money for its nutrition services when a student eats a meal.

For the last four years all 13 elementary schools in the district have had “garden bar” options for lunch that lead the youngsters to consume more fruits and vegetables because they can choose the individual items they prefer.

“Our motto is take what you want, and eat what you take,” the nutrition chief explained.

There are other not directly meal-related activities that are already having an impact on food choices. Harter explained that many schools have their own gardens and when the schools produce enough of a crop to make it happen, the vegetables the students grow can end up on the cafeteria menu.

Trustee Eileen Robinson said she has seen the excitement that can come from the students consuming the produce they grow.

“I”ve seen a group of third graders go absolutely bananas, excuse the pun, over a kale smoothie,” she said.

She said the students had grown the dark green, leafy vegetable in their school garden. She was impressed by how excited the youngsters became over the “green smoothies” concocted from their own produce.

Robinson said the teacher also used the activity as a math lesson by getting the students to compute how much smoothie it would take to see that every kid in class got an equal share of the drink.

The new regulations will ultimately result in an increase in the cost of meals for students, not in the free or reduced meal group, but those numbers have yet to be precisely determined. She said the hike will most likely be about a dime per lunch.

Staff writer Roger H. Aylworth can be reached at 896-7762 or at raylworth@chicoer.com.